CME Group announced on September 20, 2019 that it planned to launch options on its existing Bitcoin futures contracts during the first quarter of 2020, subject to regulatory review. The proposal would give professional market participants another exchange-listed instrument for managing bitcoin price exposure without requiring the options contract itself to trade or deliver spot bitcoin.
The announcement mattered because CME was extending a regulated derivatives market that had operated since December 2017. It also arrived as traditional exchange operators were competing to build cryptocurrency infrastructure for institutions. The plan was not a completed listing, a regulatory approval or evidence that institutions had broadly adopted bitcoin. It was a commitment by a major derivatives exchange to develop the next layer of its Bitcoin product line.
CME cited growth in its futures market
CME reported that its Bitcoin futures had completed 20 expiration settlements and attracted more than 3,300 individual trading accounts since their December 2017 debut. During 2019 through September 20, nearly 7,000 contracts—equivalent to approximately 35,000 bitcoin—had traded on an average day, according to the exchange.
CME also said the number of traders meeting its large-open-interest reporting threshold reached a record 56 in July 2019. Those figures were exchange-reported measures of activity in CME contracts. They did not reveal how many accounts represented banks, hedge funds, proprietary traders or other categories, and they did not measure the much larger collection of spot transactions occurring across cryptocurrency venues.
Tim McCourt, then CME’s global head of equity index and alternative investment products, attributed the planned options to client demand and growth in the futures market. He said the instruments were intended to help institutions and professional traders manage spot-market price exposure and hedge positions in CME Bitcoin futures. That explanation was a contemporaneous company statement, not an independently measured forecast of future options demand.
What an options market would add
An option generally gives its buyer a right, rather than an obligation, to establish exposure at a specified price under the contract’s terms. Applied to CME’s Bitcoin futures, options could let participants construct hedges with different payoff profiles from holding futures alone. A trader concerned about a large adverse move, for example, could potentially buy protection while defining the premium paid upfront.
That flexibility was institutionally relevant because bitcoin traded continuously across fragmented venues and remained volatile. An exchange-listed options market could place standardized contracts, clearing and exchange rules around part of that risk-transfer process.
Important details were still unresolved in the September 20 record. CME specified only a first-quarter 2020 target and said the launch remained pending regulatory review. The announcement did not provide a fixed trading date, strike schedule, expiration calendar, premium increments or final rule filing. It therefore established intent and direction, not an operational market.
Market and competitive context
Reuters recorded bitcoin at $10,134.99 around midday on September 20. Kraken’s separate daily venue report listed bitcoin at $10,146, down 1.38% over the report’s daily comparison window, with $60.3 million attributed to BTC trading. Kraken reported $105 million of activity across all markets covered by the report.
These measurements are not a consolidated closing price or global volume total. Reuters supplied a timestamped spot observation, while Kraken described activity on one exchange and did not identify a universal market cutoff or pair-by-pair composition for its BTC summary. Nothing in the surviving evidence shows that CME’s announcement caused the day’s price movement.
Reuters also reported on September 20 that Intercontinental Exchange planned to begin physically delivered Bitcoin futures through Bakkt the following Monday. CME’s proposed options and Bakkt’s scheduled futures launch used different structures, but together they showed established exchange groups competing to bring bitcoin exposure into familiar derivatives and clearing frameworks.
The defensible event-day conclusion is narrow: CME committed to pursuing options on its established Bitcoin futures market, supported its decision with reported futures activity, and left the product’s approval, final design and launch date unresolved.
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